This should comes as a surprise to absolutely no one, but IDC says the market for ‘smart connected devices’ is growing fast, driven by massive global consumer interest in smartphones and tablet computers.

Under the umbrella term ‘smart connected devices’, IDC also counts desktop and portable PCs, which both declined in the fourth quarter of 2012 (shipments were down 4.1 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively).

Looking at the full year 2012, IDC estimates that the overall ‘smart connected device’ space surged to just over 1.2 billion shipments, cumulatively. That’s a 29.1 percent jump:

You can find more charts at the foot of this post.

The research firm says tablet shipments experienced the largest year-over-year growth in 2012, up 78.4 percent over 2011, while smartphones grew 46.1 percent but accounted for 60.1 percent of all smart connected devices shipped throughout the year.